


>John: return to Yharnam

by nihilBliss



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bloodborne Fusion, Blood, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Demon Hunters, Fights, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Minor Character Death, Monster Hunters, Past Character Death, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 21:42:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilBliss/pseuds/nihilBliss
Summary: Five years to the day after your father’s disappearance, you’ve come back to Yharnam. You tell your neighbors it’s to find out what happened to him, but that’s only a small piece of the truth. You want to test yourself, see if you can hunt the way he did.The blood calls to you, and you can’t help but answer.





	>John: return to Yharnam

Heretical or not, the powder keg hunters were onto something. That's what you think to yourself as your boom hammer slams into the malformed head of a tentacle-faced brainlicker. A mechanism clicks in your hammer, blasting the wretched creature's flesh away with a gout of flame, and the crack of its skull fracturing reverberates into your arm. It falls to the ground, stunned. One more blow splatters its head like an overripe pumpkin.

You don't want to admit that you've come to enjoy sensations like the one you get from scattering chunks of brain and bone across the cobblestones of Yharnam. Maybe your dad was onto something when he insisted on hunting in that ridiculous top hat and whip cane. He swore that civility and its trappings were the only thing that separated hunters from beasts. You'll have to spare him a thought when you find his headstone, if it exists at all. 

He used to take you to Yharnam when you were young, during the day, so you could see how beautiful the city was outside of the hunt. He was born there, just like you. But he grew up in the city, enjoying the bustle and the beauty by day as he explored every corner he could find. It served him well when his mother died and he took up the hunting of beasts. 

When you were born, he fled to the countryside, hoping to spare you the abattoir the city became on the night of the hunt. He didn't want you to share his fate, but he was no fool. He knew the day would come that he'd leave to hunt and never return. So when it finally happened on your thirteenth birthday, you weren't helpless. He'd given you a key that fit a chest and told you exactly when you'd be allowed to open it. Inside, you found a letter, apologizing for the danger he took upon himself and his inability to protect you. It sat atop a stock of blood vials, a simple mace, and a pistol.

You used them to protect your home. Soon, you started killing beasts that attacked the village nearby. And when a lupine beast nearly tore your arm off, you took the plunge, sought out the transfusion, and became a hunter proper. 

You patrolled the woods and hills of your home to hone your skills, defending the innocent and getting a taste for violence. The years tempered you into a living weapon, sharp eyed, strong of arm, and half-wild with blood, as the best so often are. And now, five years to the day after your father’s disappearance, you’ve come back to Yharnam. You tell your neighbors it’s to find out what happened to him, but that’s only a small piece of the truth. You want to test yourself, see if you can hunt the way he did. 

The blood calls to you, and you can’t help but answer.

You kick a chunk of flesh out of the ignition mechanism in your hammer before you sling it over your back. It’s not that the flames won’t scorch it to nothing, but the smell of skin and meat burning to carbon lingers. It’ll be too long a night to stink like burnt corpse. You turn toward the Cathedral Ward and the poorer neighborhood nearby, prioritizing the most helpless, just like your father did.

As you reach the top of a staircase, a square opens before you, fountain at the center spitting red-tinged water across cherubic stone faces. Across the way, you spy a figure in black with a broad-brimmed hat - a priest of the Healing Church. They’re on their knees, swaying.

The wind shifts, and you smell beast. Then comes the crunch, teeth shattering bone. A beast, shaggy-haired and loping like a cross between a wolf and an ape, tears the head off of the priest. Opening its mouth wide, the beast crushes what’s left and swallows flesh, bone, brain, hair, and cloth, all as one. 

You grasp your hammer and flash-step behind a statuette. It's upwind of you and distracted. You can get the drop on it. So you flash to the edge of the square. 

Sticking close to the spikes of the towering iron fence, you creep closer. The beast stuffs its blood-caked muzzle into the corpse. Holy flesh stretches and tears, and it swallows another chunk. Blood on the breeze reaches your nose, makes the hairs on your neck and arms stand on end. Your pulse races.

The beast wraps its jaws around the priest’s collarbone. You ignite your hammer as the bone snaps, covering your noise. Now within arm's reach of the beast, you can see how matted and grimy its fur is, sticking out in clumps at odd angles, thick with sewage and city grime.

Disgusting. 

You bring your hammer behind your head. Then, trouble: a bell, behind you. The beast turns, faces you, snarls. Grunting, you slam your hammer down. It leaps aside, or tries. 

But you catch its forepaw. Fur scorches as you splinter bones. It yelps, claws at you. Already, you jump back, then swing horizontally, hoping to catch its head. It rears back, just above your swing. Its claws hit cobblestone. You've already flash-stepped to its side, and you bring your hammer down hard on its back leg. It crumples, stunned.

Clicking, your hammer ignites. You slam it on the beast’s back and feel something thick crack under your blow. It makes a horrible whining noise as it scratches at the pavement. So you walk around to its head, and you put it out of its misery, cracking its skull wide open.

It twitches, then goes still, as blood and fluids run from its broken body across the cobblestones, down into the sewers below.

“Not bad.”

The voice comes from behind you. You swing your hammer as you whip around. It whooshes through the air, hitting nothing. About ten feet away, a hunter in a red coat with black mantle leans against a statue of a long-dead vicar. He wears dark glasses over his eyes. You snarl.

“Great,” he says, twirling a silver sword in his hand. “Another asshole who can't handle his blood makes himself my problem. God dammit. Of course the dude with the wicked cool fire hammer is too wacked out and beast-y to shoot the shit before we inevitably fight. You're a waste of burning, yo.”

“You talk a lot,” you say, hand creeping toward your pistol. “Is this how you hunt? Rambling at beasts and saying dumb shit that doesn't make sense until they fall over dead from boredom?”

“Oh fuck, you're still coherent enough to clap back?” The hunter in red smiles before he pulls a scarf over his mouth. “I'm gonna call you four-leaf cover, because you just made tonight my lucky night. Let's see if you can go toe-to-toe with something smarter than a big wolf douche thing.”

You make a show of readying your hammer as you pull your pistol, a little misdirection you've practiced over the years. His eyes are on your right hand as you line up with your left.

“Bring it ON!” With the last shouted syllable, you squeeze the trigger. He flashes to the side, faster than you can track, as if he's disappeared and reappeared. You barely have time to swear before he's thrusting his sword at your guts.

You flash right and sweep your hammer into his shoulder. He staggers, and you heave your hammer around to slam in between his shoulders. But you flinch, a wide cut opening on your torso where you didn't quite clear his thrust. He flashes away… behind! You throw yourself to the stone, feeling his blade catch the tail off your coat. Landing, you roll and fire blindly at him. He cries out, clutching his eye. You leap up, ignite, swing your hammer up. It crunches loudly where it hits his chin, sending him sprawling.

You flash behind his head and raise your hammer to deal the final blow. His scarf is burnt to nothing, revealing a jaw that's been scorched black and misshapen, broken into more pieces than you care to imagine.

“Maybe now you'll stop talking,” you say. You slam the hammer down… and fracture a stone tile. He's ten, twenty feet away, rubbing his jaw and blinking his new-grown, bright red eye.

“You're quick with the blood,” you say. He grins, spitting out a mouthful of fractured teeth.

“I'm quick about everything,” he says, moonlight glinting off a brand-new canine.

You snort a laugh, then clutch your bleeding side.

“Your poor girlfriend,” you manage through the pain, using the opportunity to jab yourself with blood.

He stares at you for a moment, eyebrow cocked. Then, his visible eye goes wide, and he furrows his brow.

“Oh fuck you!” he shouts. He flings his broken glasses aside and slams his sword into a huge metal hilt on his back.

Oh. That's no hilt.

He flashes forward and swings the now-massive blade with both arms, aiming for your injured side. Just like you wanted.

You duck the blow by less than you like and dash past him, slamming your hammer into his ribs as you pass. A gruesome crack reverberates up your weapon. You feel cocky for a moment.

Moment's up; his momentum buries the blade in the top of your right shoulder, cutting through your clavicle like butter. Your hammer clatters to the ground as your arm goes limp.

You grab it with you good arm and flash away. The wind from his follow-up sweep flutters your coat. He slashes again; you knock the blade away with your hammer. You clash again and again, hammer knocking blade away. He's just as fast with this bigger blade, offering no openings. Your swings grow weaker and weaker as you bleed. He's got you, unless you do something desperate.

You throw you hammer up, grab your pistol, and shoot as he swings. The bullet tears through his hand. He loses his grip, and the sword goes flying, landing with a clatter somewhere you don't care about. You look to find your vials, jab yourself, then look up.

It plays out in slow motion. He's got your hammer. He's swinging it at you, horned side first. It catches your neck, pierces, tears your throat out. You clutch at it with your semi-functional right hand as you fall to your knees. Darkness creeps in at your periphery and swallows all.

You wonder if your father would be disappointed.

* * *

 

You cough as your consciousness comes swimming back. Your throat burns; blood forces its way into your freshly regrown larynx. Tentatively, you try to say something, but your voice comes out scratchy and unintelligible.

“Take it easy,” says a voice. “Drink this before you try to talk.”

It's the hunter in red. He presses a wineskin to your lips and pours some of its contents into your mouth. It tastes like watered-down blood. You swallow a mouthful, then another.

“And don't feel rushed or anything,” he continues, “because I've got plenty of shit to say. No risk of an awkward silence here. We're more likely to get ambushed by some blood-starved beast that got bored and decided running headlong into solid wood sounded like a good way to kill a couple of minutes. Only it doesn't know that as soon as its head comes through that wall, I'm gonna hack it clean off. Make me a trophy. Hell, those things have enough skin for a cloak, too. That'd be fresh to death.”

“Do you ever stop talking?” you rasp. You try to rub your throat, but you find your hands bound behind your back. You grope behind you for something to rub against the smooth cord of your bonds.

“Sometimes,” the hunter says. “Beasts don't really appreciate what I have to say, so I save my breath for the whole violent extermination thing we do to them.”

“Alright, I get it,” you say. You scan your surroundings and, surprisingly, recognize where you are. It's a bakery. Your father took you here when you were very young, and you remember staring at what seemed like a rainbow of colorful pastries and tea biscuits underneath glass domes on every one of the little tables that now lay in various states of splintered at the edges of the room. Memories flood back to you. They looked like toys or jewels to your five-year-old eyes, not food. But the smells of sugar, butter, vanilla, almonds, and more you couldn't put names to made your mouth water. 

But the light of the paleblood moon paints the fractured reality cold and blue-white, another corpse upon the pile. You blink, focusing on the moment.

“Why did you save me?” you ask. The hunter in red grins, dark lenses hiding his eyes. Of course he would have a backup pair.

“Whatever you've got in your veins has a hell of a kick to it,” he says, predatory. You work your wrists against the floor, the roughest thing you've found. “I'd be dumb as fuck if I just painted the cobblestones with it, huh? Not when I can have my own personal supply of the high-grade shit just chilling out.”

He pulls a knife from his belt and reflects a sliver of moonlight into your eye.

“Fuck you,” you say, and you spit in his face. But now he's beside you, and the gob of spit has landed somewhere on the floor.

“I'm messing with you, dude,” he says, half a laugh in his tone. “Nah, I want to hunt with you! You fight as hard as my dick with that hammer, but you don't seem all blood-drunk or like some other kind of nutty douche. You know, like that loopy fuck in Old Yharnam with the gatling gun.”

“Oh, man, fuck that guy,” you say.

“Seriously!” the hunter says. “Promise you won't kill me if I cut your hands lose?”

“I probably couldn't if I wanted,” you say. Dave cuts the rope from your wrists.

“I wouldn't be so sure about that,” he says as you rub your sore wrists. “You had me on my heels back there. And honestly? I wouldn't hunt with somebody who couldn't keep up with me.” 

You shrug. It seems fair. You wouldn't want to deal with beasts and take care of some milk-drinking novice hunter at the same time. He offers you his hand, which you take, and he pulls you to your feet.

“I'm Dave,” he says, giving your hand a firm shake.

“John,” you say, returning the gesture. A smile creeps across your face.

“Cool,” Dave says. “Feeling well enough to slaughter some beasts?”

You break into a grin, and Dave does the same. The memory of blood floods your senses and sends a shiver through you. All else vanishes.

“It's like you're reading my mind.”


End file.
